Various shoes such as sports shoes are provided with soles.
The soles can be roughly classified into a non-foamed sole made of a molded non-foamed article formed into a prescribed shape and a foamed sole made of a molded foam article formed into a prescribed shape.
A shoe provided with the foamed sole is lighter in weight than a shoe provided with the non-foamed sole, and is excellent in wearing impression.
Patent Document 1 discloses an ethylene copolymer consisting of only ethylene and an α-olefin having 3 to 20 carbon atoms, and having a vinyl-group content of 0.06 to 1, a MFR10/MFR2.16 of 8.5 or less, and a density of 0.850 to 0.910 g/cm3. Furthermore, Patent Document 1 describes that a foamed sole obtained by foaming this ethylene copolymer has a low specific gravity and a low compression set.
Incidentally, the foamed sole is generally a member provided with a shoe for alleviating application of impact on a wearer in walking. Namely, the foamed sole can be said as a member responsible for wearing impression (wearing comfort of shoes in which the wearer feels). For the wearing impression, softness of the foamed sole becomes an important factor.
However, in the conventional foamed sole (molded foam article), when the compressive deformation amount is varied by various applied loads, softness may also greatly change. Namely, in the conventional foamed sole, the hardness greatly changes depending on various loads.
There is a problem that, when a shoe having the foamed sole described above is each worn by, for example, a general adult male and a child, the feeling of softness varies for each wearer.    [Patent Document 1] JP 2008-308619 (WO2008/152935)